1. SSgt Barry Sadler – The Ballad of the Green Berets. Well, I can’t say I expected to like a song with this title, but at least the lyrics are candid about the fact that one of the main things that happens when you’re a soldier is that you die.  The second line describes the Green Berets as “fearless men who jump and die,” and the last two stanzas are about a young woman finding out that her husband has “died for those oppressed”… and then making her son “one of America’s best,” presumably so that he can die too.  Hey wait — was this song secretly a plot by Valerie Solanas to kill off the entire male population?  Don’t answer that.  ”The Ballad of the Green Berets” is extremely simplistic musically speaking, without the flute-and-drum interludes of “The Yellow Rose of Texas” or the varied vocal styles of “The Battle of New Orleans.”  The closest it gets to interesting is the unexpected brass fanfares that appear between the lines in the final stanzas.  I can’t imagine how the song got so popular, unless it was just a reaction against the growing anti-war movement.

2. The Association – Cherish. If I hadn’t listened to the lyrics, I would think this was a tender love song, with its major seventh chords, sweet vocal harmonies and wistful melodies.  Turns out, though, it’s actually an expression of tremendous desperation: “Perish is the word that more than applies / To the hope in my heart each time I realize / That I am not gonna be the one to share your dreams…”  At one point he even accuses the addressee of “driving me out of my mind,” although I have to say I’m a little more worried about her, having to deal with a guy who seems to be one step away from becoming a stalker.  Most alarmingly, he dismisses the “thousand other guys” who hit on her as liars who tell her that they love her when all they want is to touch her face and hands (creepy fetishization or euphemism to get around record-label censors?)… and then goes on to say “you don’t know how many times I’ve wished that I could hold you.”  I have no idea if The Association were aware of the hipocrisy and mocking the narrator they constructed, or if they actually thought this was a sweet unrequited-love song, but either way, this might be the most culturally distressing song to crack the top five yet, and that’s saying something considering the existence of the Mills Brothers’ “Paper Doll.”

3. The Righteous Brothers – (You’re My) Soul and Inspiration. I don’t like this nearly as much as the Righteous Brothers’ previous hit, “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’.”  It’s still got the harpsichords and the deep vocals, but for the most part it comes off as overwrought and overblown to me.  I don’t like feeling like a song’s manner of emotional expression consists of shouting in my ear.  The song does have an Ink-Spots-esque spoken interlude, though, which provides a certain continuity with the R&B tradition, and that section is introduced by a beautiful passage in which the texture is reduced to what sounds to me like only pitched percussion, although there could be a quiet guitar in there somewhere.

4. The Four Tops – Reach Out I’ll Be There. When I was visiting grad schools during my senior year of college, I took a number of rides in vans run by a company that picked people up in various parts of Connecticut and took them to airports in New York City.  Because they’ll pick you up pretty much anywhere and try to fill their vans, this often meant excursions into pretty remote places, and I remember one late night coming back from the airport, driving out into some suburban wasteland, in total darkness, with this song on the van’s radio.  I wasn’t familiar with it, but the chorus’s shifts between major and minor — “I’ll (V) be there (I) / with a love (iv) that will shelter you-ou-ou (V)” — seemed incredibly haunting.  Hearing it now at full volume and under less mysterious circumstances, it’s not so haunting, but it’s certainly satisfying.  I like the random extra bar of just drums and bass that the band inserts before each chorus, too.  I have to admit, though, the song does have a shouty quality like that of “(You’re My) Soul and Inspiration.”  I tend to like my soul a little sneakier — think “Heard It Through the Grapevine.”

5. ? and the Mysterians – 96 Tears. Minimalist garage rock is back!  This one actually feels like something concocted in someone’s garage, with its endlessly oscillating organ riff, harmonically motionless bridge, detached vocals and repetitive, seemingly meaningless lyrics.  The only thing I can think of to compare it to are the Silver Apples, an early synth band who never came anywhere near the singles charts.  Plus it’s written by a guy who legally changed his name to a question mark and whose real identity is still uncertain.  You can see why the punk movement got interested in it fifteen years later (see, for example, X quoting its title in “Johny Hit and Run Pauline”).

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